The second-year Edmonton Eskimos general manager, your correspondent has learned, has been putting together a plan designed to totally change the way the former flagship franchise finds football players.

In its own way it’s not unlike what the Oilers, the other cellar-dwelling former dynasty team in town, is doing in attempting to build a player development system to help them get back to the top of the league and help them stay there when they get there.

Hervey’s scout troop is ground-breaking for the Eskimos, a team that once had the league’s best scouting supplied by Ray Newman and Frank Morris.

“As an organization, we just haven’t had enough feet on the ground,” said Hervey.

What he is putting together, when approved by the board of directors in mid February, will be totally at the other end of the spectrum to what had existed here under Eric Tillman.